INQUIRY CONSIDERATIONS

This insect collection project draws heavily on the idea of Inquiry. The diagram at right is taken from the Michigan High School Content Expectations for science and helps explain the practices of science literacy.

Inquiry is a type of model based reasoning that starts with students making observations, then guides them in identifying patterns in the data so they can develop generalizations and models to explain and predict what happens in the world around us.

Inquiry is different from some traditional types of instruction that involve Identifying or Using knowledge. Identifying skills involve describing models, patterns or data, while Using skills are involved when students are introduced to models or theories first, and then perform experiments to generate data to test or verify the model (or to see the model in operation). All three forms of instruction are useful and necessary, however students learn different skills with each method. The type of instruction used should depend on the instructional goals.

Steps in the Inquiry Process

The information below outlines an idealized model for inquiry, not to constrain our account of inquiry, but rather to serve as a reminder of the range of activities that might be involved. The danger in any description of a process is that the reader may infer that that description is the only, or the ideal, form of that process; or, that the aspects of the process are steps to go through in some linear fashion. The intention here is not to specify the only, or the ideal process. Nor is it to identify rigid steps to follow in doing inquiry.Instead, it is to present in an organized way some of the important aspects of inquiry that ought to be supported in a successful learning environment. For example, we should remember that inquiry often does and often should lead to new ideas, results, theories, questions, etc. that can be communicated with others. This communication is central to the whole inquiry process and our classroom environments ought to have a place for it. But not every question needs to lead to a publication, or even a sharing of findings with a classmate.Formulate problems

Inquiry and How People Learn

The benefits of using inquiry processes for learning are well described in Chapter 1 of the book "How People Learn" (Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000 National Academies Press).The preliminary activities (steps 1-3) are student centered tasks that activate and connect students with their community and prior learning (pg. 10). As students collect, identify and analyze insects they add deep and organized knowledge about taxonomy and the processes of science (pg. 16). As students practice over and over with each insect they quickly and effectively learn to “zero-in” on those characteristics which are used to separate the major insect orders from one another. Continuing on to steps 3 and 4 students will compare individual and class data, making inferences and predictions. Finally, in the application tasks, students are given additional freedom to guide their own learning in developing and researching questions (pg. 19).

As the year progresses students recognize improvement in their skills of observing and classifying when we practice them again; with a leaf collection later in the fall and then with a mineral collection in the spring. I find that the students are able to reflect back on the ways in which their skills have improved as they are reinforced through the year. Students will come to understand, as they are asked to think about their thinking (metacognition), how the steps they performed led them to their conclusions, and how they or others might perform these tasks in the future (pg. 21).

The Nature of Science

Copied from Indiana University ENSI Lab - the Nature of ScienceAs we conduct this insect collection project it is also important to reflect on the usefulness of the data and our conclusions. These reflections go to the heart of our activities, to the nature of science itself. The most succinct and useful explanation I have come across is from the ENSI lab at indiana University. This explanation is copied below.

What IS the Nature of Science?Some teachers have asked how "The Nature of Science" differs from "The Scientific Method." There is a common myth that there is only one way to do science: The Scientific Method. However, in spite of its persistence in science textbooks and science standards, we find there is much more to science than its special ways of solving problems by testing proposed solutions. The "Nature of Science" (NoS), on the other hand, consists of those seldom-taught but very important features of working science, e.g., its realm and limits, its levels of uncertainty, its biases, its social aspects, and the reasons for its reliability. Our ignorance of these features of science has lead to many misuses, misrepresentations and abuses of science.Science has its limits; it cannot be used to solve any kind of problem. Science can only address natural phenomena (not supernatural phenomena, as such), and only natural explanations can be used in science. Supernatural or magical explanations cannot be definitively or reliably tested - they cannot be disproved, since any result of any test could be attributed to some supernatural or mysterious influence. Natural explanations are testable - open to being disproved - being shown not to follow consistent rules of nature. The fact that the most highly credible concepts in science have survived such critical testing attests to the practical reliability of scientific knowledge and the processes of science that created that knowledge. Scientific solutions tend to work!Questions that require subjective, political, religious, ethical or esthetic judgment are generally beyond the power of science. Science can be used to shed light on such issues, but it seldom provides any final answers.Scientific knowledge is inherently uncertain. What we know in science is only with a relative level of confidence - a particular degree of probability. Many ideas (understandings) in science have been extensively tested and found to be highly reliable, as close to a fact as an idea can be. Others are merely speculative hunches, awaiting suitable testing to measure their respective probabilities. And there is every level in between.Science can be done poorly, and it can be misused. There are many variations of medical quackery, false advertising and other forms of "pseudoscience," where unconfirmed claims are presented as "scientific fact" to "prove" a flood of discredited assertions about a whole range of seemingly mysterious phenomena. Students must learn (and practice) the critical strategies for recognizing such claims.Science is a very social process. It is done by people working together collaboratively. Its procedures, results and analyses must be shared with the scientific community, and the public, through conferences and publications. These communications are critically assessed by the community, where errors, oversights and fraud can be exposed, while confirmation and consilience can be achieved to strengthen its findings. Being done by people, science is also subject to any of the biases that its workers have, but its openness to critical community oversight tends to expose those biases when they have been allowed to creep in.

How Science Works

The activities in this Insect Collection project are intended to be an actual representation of how science is really performed in broader society, so that students have a broad and connected understanding of how science works. A description of how science works, taken from the University of California Museum of Paleontology website is a good one-page visual representation of the complex interactions that occur in the scientific process.